my thesis is finished

My thesis is finished.

98 pages total, which includes a fair amount of graduate school-required formatting. The table of contents is pretty, though.

I took the day off yesterday, got a few things done, but mostly watched Battlestar Galactica. I'm hooked. (I blame you all, you know who you are, for this.)

Yeah, that's all I've got right now.

the end is near

My brain is on overdrive. However, I think it's starting to overheat. Or perhaps simply putting things not related to my thesis out of mind. Unsuccessfully, however, because a lot of my own mental one-liners are sticking there. Staying in lab for sixteen hours will do that. The semester is drawing to a close, however, and very long hours don't seem so bad so long as I'm accomplishing something and the light at the end of the tunnel, as Mrs. Juicebox refers to it, keeps getting brighter. The thesis will be finished soon. I can do this, I will do this. I, however, do not yet have a good title for my thesis. I'd like to get "drunken teenage mice" or "contributing to the delinquincy of minors" in there somehow, though.

Thesis count: 70 pages, a few more references than last time

weekend conversational highlights

"So I was thinking, while I was being a slutty, slutty whore..."

"Y'know between the what, ten of us, we could write a pretty decent sitcom."
"We are a sitcom."

faith and science

There is a rather eloquent blog post to be written somewhere in between this CNN article on Collins and this blog entry refuting Dr. Collins ideas and opinions. Right now I don't have enough presence of thought to write said post.

Suffice to say that faith is intrinsically not quantifiable. That's why it is referred to as 'faith' and not something more solid. Attempts to force views on either side of the faith question are never going to win converts, merely escalate arguments.


Data analyzed...working on results section and discussion, albeit slowly and painfully and stressfully.

there is no excuse

Lately I've been doing as little thinking as possible outside of what I have to (which is quite a lot). Coping mechanism, I suppose. Just ready to be finished and to get my buffer for handling stress back. Unfairly to everyone around me, I seem to walk around either totally exhausted or ready to bite someone's head off. Or both.

At the moment I'm freaking out about something because it's not working and is very vital to my walking away from this campus with a degree to show for the last three years of misery. It is also seems to be out of my control. Insert expletive of choice to describe bioinformatics... This on top of sheer exhaustion from playing more rugby at a higher level than ever before packed into two days.

I'm listening to a lot of Radiohead recently if that's any indication.

Don't even ask about the thesis count.

music city

It's late and I really ought to be finishing packing. Or sleeping. But I'm too excited, the Valkyries are headed to Nashville tomorrow for NashBash! This is my first big 15s tournament as a rugger and I'm totally psyched, as is the rest of the team. Our theme for the social rocks, too; we even have a song!

Okay. Back to work. Still have three discussion sections to teach and a lecture to sit in on between now and my flight out.

life is good

From asofterworld.com

nerdgasm

Oh. My. God. If my iPod wasn't a generation early I would so buy this. I don't know how actually useful it would be for me as neuroanatomy is only a very minimal concern for what I do, but having an brain atlas on my iPod? What could possibly be more awesome?

As a side note, Tim totally ROCKS. For many reasons, not the least of which being that he's willing to spend an evening touring the high and low culture of Austin, TX with me, but at the moment because he bought me the new Anberlin album. So I can rock out while working on my "MASSIVE paper."

steam-powered

Maybe it's just my obsession with all things Firefly and Firefly-like (which this somewhat resembles) but this Steampunk showcase at SXSW looks awesome. I could totally use a time machine booth these days.


ah yes, the thesis count: 38 pages, 64 references, and hybridizing arrays tonight!

re:

"If there is anything I could tell prospective lawyers it would be, don't go right out of undergrad. Don't even take just one year off. Do something else for at least 3 or 4 years. If you still want to go back, then you probably want it bad enough not to resent it before you're through."

I'd say that applies in science as well. (Mrs. Juicebox is exceptionally good at articulating things that I also am dealing with or thinking. Particularly in response to certain Dooce posts.) If there is anything I regret it would be coming to graduate school straight out of undergrad. I wasn't ready. No one is at 21. So I find myself cutting my time at UT short and still wondering if that nagging little voice is right about mastering out of the program being failure. Not to mention the mass amount of uncertainty in a large swath of things going on or about to occur in my life. Truly, though, I can't complain; I wound up in Austin and this city has been good enough to provide me with amazing friends and a million opportunites I haven't even begun to explore. I just wish I could shake that negative little voice.

thesis count: 32 pages, 61 citations, experiments in progress